* Posts by Jean-Luc

472 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007

Page:

Love in the time of the internet: A personal memoir

Jean-Luc
Meh

You lost me at...

>and it's highly advisable to bring a friend along with you as backup

Seriously? I have never been on a date where the lady brought along a friend. I don't think I'd go along if told in advance and I am pretty sure I would not go to a second date if it was sprung on me.

But public spaces are indeed a sine qua non.

Btw, the cleverest, simplest, argument I've seen for online dating was a long time ago, in a paper personal:

"Would it be better to hope that we'll meet while walking our respective poodles?"

How much for Opera's app store in my TV? A tenor, perhaps?

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

Ah, confusing the boob tube with something clever, again.

>if the TV app stores become anything like as polarised and politically important as mobile stores

When I got my new Samsung TV I went through all the reviews, especially the negative ones.

A lot of those expressed frustration at the difficulty of using a browser or app on a "smart" TV. Without keyboard, without mice. I was familiar enough with this rant, having had the same issue with my PS3, so I bought the set. Awesome TV. Netflix works, which saves power over booting up the PS3 to run it. But Youtube searching is atrociously slow. Like the PS3.

I hope Opera makes itself at home on TVs, it sure beats Sony's craptographic attempt at writing its own PS3 browser.

But I don't think we should confuse TVs with computers or mobiles, both of which have way cleverer input devices. Though a Kinect-type pointer could work, provided it was precise enough. Or a clever phone-app remote, but Samsung's current implementation is not.

Microsoft dev tools to add Linux-style source code versioning

Jean-Luc
Boffin

Re: Cognitive Dissonance Alert (CDA)...

>but how exactly has Git been unfriendly for Windows developers?

Isn't a huge part of Git's underpinnings based on symlinks? I know symlinks didn't exist till Windows 7(Vista?), but even then I am not sure how well they work on Windows 7. Not exactly a high profile feature in it, nowhere like on a 'nix/bsd system and I haven't seen anyone use them.

Has anybody used win7 symbolic links in anger? Good stuff?

Jean-Luc
Thumb Up

Re: VS2012

>Is it just me or do the Windows8 ads all look like a tampon commercial ?

:-) :-) :-)

Win 8 commercial in Canadian theatres, featuring an attractive (male) narrator:

"I live in a space between appearance and reality..."

Style, not substance, is very much the message.

Cynicism aside, very good news that MS is supporting Git and starting to be slightly less insular. Let's hope they play fair.

Apple users: Only Apple can track us! Not Google

Jean-Luc
Trollface

Re: @Ian

>The real losers in all this are those who like to generalise people based on the browser they use.

Even IE6 users?

Dead Steve Jobs tried to KILL Ashton Kutcher from beyond the grave

Jean-Luc
Trollface

Re: Kutcher,

True, which is why I would add a surely untrue, unwarranted cynical, alternative explanation:

Before release, any publicity is good publicity.

Ever notice how even real movie stinkers have a spike of supposedly-unrelated interviews with the main actors? Interviews which, quite by accident, mention the upcoming movie in passing?

No, nothing like "this is the greatest movie ever". But often things like "a big challenge of mine in filming XYZ was..."

Megan Fox talking about reading the comics for Texarcana for example. The article almost had me thinking she was a brainy geek who never got asked to the prom ;-)

Oh, those crazy Frenchies: Facebook faces family photo tax in France

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

Workable proposal, for sure.

A common French objection to a proposal:

"Can't use this. It works fine in practice, but not in theory".

Just how impractical and daft do French government proposals have to be be before their constituents laugh at them?

Tell you what, Mr. Hollande. Find a way to tax Amazon sales to French residents. Or Starbucks. Cutting down on obvious corporate tax tourism makes sense. This? Does. Not.

Mostly, get a effin clue and balance your budget. First time in what, 30+ years? For left and right govts.

How come France taxes at Swedish levels, delivers public services at Italian levels and accumulates debt like Greece, eh? Work on that, or more folks will emigrate, like I did. Best thing I ever did.

Google pulls 'racist' Make Me Asian app

Jean-Luc
Boffin

Re: More PC over-reaction

>To me "tasteless" might apply, but "racist" is out of the question.

Tasteless for sure. Racist? If quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck...

No huge deal, as an independent developer, writing apps that you sell/distribute directly to some bozos who want to have fun. Good taste? No. Law-breaking or needs to be stifled? No.

Doesn't mean it belongs on a curated catalog however. Google really should have figured out the risk to their reputation for themselves.

Put it differently. I'm white and not particularly PC. Google's not going to lose my business.

If I was not, I might wonder what motivated Google to keep this listing. And, if I were Asian, rather than the tedious white PC brigade, I don't think it would be ridiculous of me to get pissed off.

Not rocket science, folks.

Google's JavaScript assassin: Web languages are harder than VMs

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

Re: My Two Cents on A Browser Language

Replies?

A not-so-retarded academic designed Pascal, oh not-so-clever opinionated one.

Personally, in an environment as malware-hostile as the internet, I rather like VMs and rather dislike the idea of machine code being generated and blindly trusted to execute safely. But that's just me.

That's also the reason I rather like JS - the browsers do not trust it. Java on the other hand is handed over to a real VM which is trusted, with disastrous results. Raw speed is not always the most important thing and having a clear trust demarcation between real programs and web-based scripts is not a design flaw.

Hey HP: You may not rate Autonomy, EDS, but buyers do

Jean-Luc
Trollface

subtle hints

>Whitman said: “My belief is that the single biggest challenge facing HP has been changes in CEOs and executive leadership, which has caused multiple inconsistent strategic choices and frankly some significant executional miscues.”

Translation: "keep me, keep me".

Kidding aside, HP's board needs to be more vigilant about vetoing dumb CEO moves, but at the same time it does need to let Meg get on with her work. Hopefully her own Skype writedown will have taught her some lessons about signing big cheques.

British armed forces get first new pistol since World War II

Jean-Luc
Facepalm

@Zmodem. going for a record?

Seriously, you are getting so many downvotes it is not funny.

>buy every shot is a kill shot

A "kill shot" needs to hit first before it can think about killing anything. Duh!

Two things matter here: accuracy and number of rounds. Pistols will struggle with the first, which is why they are backup weapons (on which you don't want to waste 2 kg of weight allowance).

I'd much rather go with a gun without too much recoil, if I were in combat. Sure, on a range, you can take the appropriate stance and pause between shots. In combat, you want your barrel to remain roughly pointed at the target between shots, not flying around because you just had to shoot an elephant gun at a mosquito.

Second, the ammo volume. .50 rounds are heavy so you won't carry too many. Doesn't give you much chance at wild shots/suppressive fire/etc... Nope, you are stuck with manly aimed fire, using a pistol. Clever.

Just offhand, how many rounds fired do you think it takes an army unit to kill/incapacitate an enemy in combat, on average? Hundreds, if not thousands, except when snipers are involved. Big reason for 5.56, instead of 7.62.

US Patent Office seeks public input on software patents' future

Jean-Luc

What can we learn from working patent ecosystems?

Anybody know how patents were handled in the context of car airbags?

Obviously, folks didn't die for 17 yrs until the patents ran out.

Also, the car industry seems a much better example of working patents. Car companies innovate and I am pretty sure they get patents. But rivals usually come up with something equivalent, even outside of security features ( say self-parking mechanisns). So there must be lots less vague patents.

OTOH, pharmaceutics see a lot of bogus patent jousting.

I am not sure I am 100% onboard of "no software patents". Innovation deserves rewards. But I'd much rather see NO software patents than the current unholy mess we are stuck with.

USPTO: improve, or disband, your software & business methods division.

Major new science: Women more nude, more often online

Jean-Luc
Happy

google search

>most harmless of google search terms and you can guarantee to have some pron links

Not entirely true, at least with Google safe search turned on.

Few years back, the BBC had an article about a primary school teacher bringing in her VCR to school as the school's was kaputt. What she had left in the VCR was quite, quite, NSFW.

Back home drinking beers with a buddy, I recount the story and google "teacher porn videotape" to show him. Literally. About a split second later, we both spray beer all over the keyboard as we realize the search terms.

Well, Google didn't find the original article, that's true. But neither did it find much else that was objectionable. I was very impressed.

Craptastic analysis turns 2.8 zettabytes of Big Data into 2.8 ZB of FAIL

Jean-Luc
Happy

Re: Obese Data

>of no real benefit

Not true. It is of great big benefit to the vendors of big data solutions.

Our industry works in recurring waves of the consensual next big thing, with customers periodically being fleeced by buzzword-toting sales and marketing types, as well industry pundits.

Every so often, something of value comes out of the new paradigms, but most of it is of dubious value and provides little long term competitive advantage*. Because the subject matter is still evolving, costs are high and implementations likely account for a good percentage of failed projects in those organizations that are not otherwise pathologically incompetent at IT by nature (i.e. government IT wastes money with or without those things).

Especially useful to the vendors when the new paradigm translates into big honking servings of hardware and consulting. CRM, anyone? Real time enterprise? Object repositories?

* straight out of Nick Carr

Perl programming language marks 25th birthday

Jean-Luc

Re: >new (even minor) version of the Python interpreter...

>try to update a Zope program a few versions

Probably quite true. I also recall that, when I hung out with some of the smarter devs in our local Python User Group, they had had quite a lot of exposure to Zope and not much love for it. Including people presenting themselves as Zope experts. I confess I totally didn't get Zope myself, too complex for me.

I think it may also be useful to distinguish API churn on modules included with the Python distribution from churn on external third party Python python modules. From what you are saying about hard to find dependencies, it sounds like Zope relies on lots of externals.

Good information for me on both posts, does sound like I have been lucky, but then again I don't use that many 3rd party modules, except for mx.ODBC and some Excel parsers. Something for me to keep in mind if I need to build more complex systems - reliance on free externals comes at a price.

Jean-Luc
Happy

>new (even minor) version of the Python interpreter...

>But upgrade to a new (even minor) version of the Python interpreter let's hope you never have to, or evil API changes you will encounter and fix your code you'll be forced to

Yeah, I call BS on this one. Went from 1.52 all the way 2.6, stopping on 3-4 intermediate versions merrily along the way and not that much change that I recall, my programs mostly "just worked". Only reason I am not on 2.7 is mxODBC's usual new version = new license shenanigans. Not saying nothing changed in the module APIs, just that not breaking existing programs seems quite high on the Python designer priorities.

Python 3.x, now that I know has incompatibilities.

Having said that, the Yoda chant OP isn't totally up front either. Sure, you can write crappy Perl that you can't maintain. But look at the use case, and compare it to equivalent Python uses. A lot of Perl is presumably quick automation and hacks. I know that's what I use Python for.

A lot of what I write in Python is under the radar, seat of the pants, "get it working so I can work on my real deliverables" stuff. 2-3 days to solve something that seems solvable but is complex and is started without upfront analysis.

Some of it stinks to high heaven when I look at it later. Even with Python's much cleaner syntax. Agreed Perl's syntax likely makes it very hard to write clean code, but the type of problems it is used to solve also push towards hacky & difficult to maintain code.

Typically, if it is a script that I know I will want to use and reuse, I may very well throw away the first iteration after it gets too messy. Yes, even with tidy, pristine, clean, Python, much as I love it. Thing is, much of the time, the value of a quick automation script is not immediately apparent - what seems useful turns out to be a one shot affair and what seems trivial becomes a valuable new utility. Not conducive to clean code, in any language.

So let's not complain about Perl more than warranted. The tool is not necessarily to blame for the uses that are made of it. A programmer who knows when to use or not to use Perl (or Python or Ruby) is ahead of one who doesn't.

Happy birthday!

After Sandy Hook, Senator calls for violent video game probe

Jean-Luc

@Franklin

Allright, Franklin, I'll bite.

My post was intentionally snarky & nasty, because Joerg comes across as a bats**t swivel-eyed loon on his post accusing Obama of being behind Sandy Hook.

Exactly the same way I think the 911 Truthers & the Michael Moores are loons for accusing Bush, a man I don't much like, of being behind 9/11. Left wing zealots, right wing zealot, both fanatics to me.

Do you disagree with me thinking Joerg is an idiot for accusing Obama? Or do you think that Obama had something to do with it? Regardless of your views on gun control? Regardless of my views of gun control?

There is really very little honor in accusing the other's side politicians of being an accomplice at a time of national tragedy like this. I find it profoundly, profoundly, disgusting and it denotes a singular lack of decency and civility.

With 9/11 & Bush. With Sandy Hook & Obama.

Jean-Luc
Black Helicopters

Re: More retarded nonsense. And CIA under Barack Hussein Obama orders behind it!

With clear-minded folks like you leading the way it is TOTALLY unbelievable to see how Barack Hussein Obama could have won.

One, insignificant, oft-quoted, but unlikely, achievement of banning weapons in the US is that Canada might have less murders committed, especially in gang warfare, using weapons smuggled in from the US.

But, obviously, not worth considering since we all know how important home US gun ownership has been in keeping the Commies' out and US citizens safe. I personally tremble, living right next to one of Canada's poorest neighborhoods, whenever I have to walk there without a concealed weapon to defend myself with. Shameful. Obviously, we could cut our already low crime rate by half, or more, if we adopted laws freely allowing obviously intelligent and decent citizens, like you or me, to carry near-military grade weapons. Or at least concealed 9mm pistols.

Did you know that Red Dawn was actually a documentary? Yes, it was. Suppressed, shamefully, just like Capricorn One. Best way to hide a truth is to dress it up as fiction. Standard CIA black ops.

New Year's resolution: Don't use Instagram, it'll sell YOUR photos

Jean-Luc
WTF?

Doesn't add up

Yup, I realize that FB paid out $1B for Instagram, but

Upside?

What is the really big upside in selling amateur photos to advertisers? Are the photos gonna be that great? What's in it for the advertisers that they are going to jump on this awesome opportunity and shell out a lot of moolah? Do big, high-profile, advertisers even want to touch this issue with a ten foot pole?

Downside:

Didn't FB already have a splat about "sponsored stories"? I don't see why they would want to run extra risks regarding user privacy issues. FB may or may not be appreciated by all and sundry and they were overvalued on their IPO. But they are the ONLY social network around and will remain so until an upstart has a way more attractive offering (network effect). Leaves them plenty of time and $ to figure ways to be profitable. JUST BY NOT SCREWING UP.

An incoming upstart may be attractive on the basis of superior service. Or just by being "less evil". I really don't see why FB wants to expose itself to that second risk by earning itself a lot of negative press.

At the end of day, I figure FB just doesn't "get" privacy. It is a calculated gamble and not necessarily a bad one, from the profit-maximization point of view of FB. But in this particular case, are how the likely benefits worth the probable risks?

Copyright trolls, biz scum, freetards - it's NOT black and white

Jean-Luc
Thumb Up

good points

>too little IP protection often hurts consumers and creators in the same way

What I can see is that the avenues for legally enjoying content are being narrowed all the time.

5 years ago I opted out of cable TV. I had a video rental store on my block. 3 more within 5 blocks. I believe there is only one left in the city now. Netflix Canada is cheap, but quite crappy, with limited movies compared to US Netflix. Amazon US won't stream movies to Canada, but Amazon Canada has all the attraction and choice of Soviet stores.

Apple manages to price a HD movie download the same as a physical Blu Ray @ full price. WTF? That much for a DRMed file I can only use on their hardware? Don't need to be a freetard to see the problem there.

I blame both the "boy I can all those movies for free, why should I pay?" download crowd. And stupid, stupid, government regulations about who can sell what to whom.

Ditto music. Few record stores left. Thankfully Canadians can finally buy MP3s from Amazon US. After years of being shunned, probably so Celine Dion & other government approved artists gets a piece of the pie. The little guys sure don't get much of the music taxes on things like recordable media, it goes to whoever is able to hitch to the gravy train.

Movies and music cost money to make. Pretending you are entitled to it free is daft. But so is a world where individuals get sued for tens of thousands of $ per MP3 posted online.

Bring back some sanity to IP, consumer and artist rights. If it was worthwhile to rent us $3 physical DVDs with all the logistic hassles that go with it, how come we can't seem to find a way to rent them for $2 as downloads?

Google Maps becomes Apple's most popular app

Jean-Luc
Thumb Up

Review neglects an important feature

New Google Maps also seems to work much better than before offline.

I downloaded it last night, looked at today's itinerary and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was still seeing some considerable zooming and panning capability once arrived at my destination, despite my being cheap and relying only on WIFI for data.

I suspect it is a side effect of its vector-based graphics, they probably download enough data when you look at something in particular to support offline mode in the vicinity.

Hats off to Google for a job well done. And, kudos to Apple for not being stupidly obstructive and letting them in. Or maybe they were just relieved to have a better map story on iOS6.

Chinese student fails job interview because of iPhone

Jean-Luc
Headmaster

Re: Really?

>In the UK, owning an iPhone doesn't mean your wealthy.

doesn't mean _your_ wealthy?

Pikey? Chav? Harsh terms for someone who spells like shite himself.

Dawn of the X-Men? MUTANTS swarm AMONG US, say geneticists

Jean-Luc
Happy

inbreading is indeed a very serious problem.

Gotta regulate those bakeries some more.

BlackBerry 10: AWESOME. If the hardware matches it, RIM jobs are safe

Jean-Luc
Thumb Up

Sweet

I've always had a soft spot for QNX since the early 90s when I first saw it in 4MB RAM industrial PCs.

IMHO, RIM and Nokia both dropped the ball in that they didn't modernize their OSs. Say what you want about people wanting shinies. If the OS and dev stack suck hard enough the shinies won't shine much and no one will write apps for them.

Assuming RIM can execute on a decent story for the devs, get out some good HW and mollify the stockmarkets for a while... assuming all this then we could move out of our current two-horse race.

And I confess that I am not against the idea of one-vendor solutions. If things don't work, or if the OS doesn't get updated regularly, the hardware guy can't claim it's the OS vendor's fault & vice versa*.

Honestly, good to see that RIM could, possibly, potentially, hypothetically be making its way back.

Competition is what we need more of.

* (given a choice, I'd still probably get a Samsung over a Google phone)

HP: AUTONOMY 'misrepresented' its value by $5 BILLION, calls in SEC

Jean-Luc
Thumb Up

I agree. There are probably two motivations going on:

a) Try to pin the blame on an overpriced acquisition somewhere else and claw some money back.

The auditors' standard defense in all these cases has been "Not our fault. Disclaimers provided along with our fat invoice".

Yes, deals like this are made through auditors. That's reality and won't change. Yes, auditors are sometimes nowhere as clever as their hourly rates would lead you to believe. Maybe this case will again show the need for a better way. Mind you, if you held the auditors' balls in a vise in case of errors, those companies would exit the audit field wholesale and go back to safer activities like writing up spreadsheets to flog CDOs.

Still, shame on KPMG if they messed up that much.

b) Blame ongoing problems on bad old Apotheker. Which is fair enough, as a lot of people questioned a $10B acquisition for a not-widely-known company.

Except that Meg "let's buy Skype" Whitman is hardly one to talk and has yet to prove that HP's board didn't, again, mess up by hiring her.

Design guru: Windows 8 is 'a monster' and 'a tortured soul'

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

@select * from Clue

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-8-Pro-Upgrade/product-reviews/B008H3SW4I/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

3/5 star avg on amazon does not a good reception make. Interesting that many seem to object specifically to Metro.

Perhaps all fanbois, eh?

Personally I rather like Nielsen's views. Advocates stuff too dour & simple sometimes, but many websites have way too many things going on. Seeing that translated to a desktop is sad.

Hope ms gets a clue because I'll be on Win8 one o these days, unwillingly so.

Ballmer comes not to praise Sinofsky but to bury him

Jean-Luc
Joke

An endorsement for Sinofsky

... being dissed by Balmer ;-)

esp. if Julie Larson-Green, his replacement, is the "thinking" brain behind office ribbons and metro UIs.

What kind of idiot promotes someone whose pet hobby horses have so thoroughly irked a substantial portion of the customer base? *

* if you're of the opinion that us GUI novelty whiners should just suck it up, good for you. All I am asking is an option to skin the apps using a more reasonable GUI. i.e. an optional menu in Office and an equivalent to Classic Shell.

Sinofsky OFFSKI: Is Windows 9 now codenamed 'Defenestrate'?

Jean-Luc
Happy

Mr. 2007 Office Ribbon Only/No Alternative? Gone?

Probably also Mr. Win 8 "Metro only/no Start button mode" (though Classic Shell seems to have no problems providing that functionality).

Good riddance!

The GPL self-destruct mechanism that is killing Linux

Jean-Luc
Meh

Go to the source article...

Start @ http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257

The point that original article is trying to make is much more succinct in scope.

1. FreeBsd takes a huge amount of time to compile.

2. That's because there are a lot of Ports (think apt-get or rpm) pointing to LOTS of programs

3. The programs have horrendous package dependencies.

Example: Firefox requiring, somewhere upstream, a TIFF package, either directly or through its dependents, even though FF does not do TIFF.

Or a package requiring both PERL and Python directly (WTF???).

4. Supposedly, autoconf makes a hash of what it has to deal with in 2. and 3. The author therefore laments that the kids these days don't know how to code.

Personally, regardless of the very ugly plumbing and cruft, which I am sure the original poster is much better qualified to comment on, I am rather impressed that I can go on an Apple command line and run the macports to install & compile a program automatically, including its dependencies.

Or that the various sudo apt-get flavors on Linux manage the same feat on essentially the same program source code.

When you think about it, that IS pretty impressive and a huge achievement of open source. Or are we supposed to pine for the heydays of 1990s Unix fragmentation???

Even though I can't disagree with the OP that there are a lot of cruft and hacks involved. And I am sure there are many incompetent coders distributed amongst all the FOSS licenses and proprietary stacks.

Jean-Luc
FAIL

What is this article trying to say, exactly?

None of the criticism voiced here is specific to Linux or the GPL. And, one, alleged, autoconf mess does not a general indictment make.

What I read here instead is a broad indictment of open source. Not entirely unwarranted in some cases, but way too broad and not argued well.

Can open source programs be a mess? Yes. So can closed source programs. The first step in doing anything with an open source anything is 1. check when was the last time the program was updated. 2. check the open bugs. 3. if you are a dev and planning to use the libraries, take a look at the code.

I know step 3 got me to junk a once-favored Python alternative to Django - code was an incredibly ugly mess of nested IFs that would discredit any programmer. Not clever - I have a hard time grokking Django's internals because it is too clever for me - just ugly.

None of the 3 vetting criteria above can be applied as efficiently with closed source, since even bug counts are generally kept under wrap.

Second, there could be case made that the BSD family of Unixes are kept on a tighter leash than Linux. But that this more due to the smaller teams and reluctance to change things much than to a GPL vs. BSD license argument. Stability over features and innovation. That's a different question, but not what the article covers.

Third, can open source programs be less than innovative? Yes, many are. So are most commercial programs. Can they be useless forks or vanity projects? Yes, and it behooves you to estimate long term viability before coupling your code or business processes to an open source project.

Last, spot the reasoning:

a) autoconf is a mess and uses GPL

b) Linux uses GPL

c) Therefore Linux is a mess

I prefer BSD over GPL in general, but I find this character assassination less than convincing. And, microkernel vs. monolithic has, again, little to do with the GPL. It's not like microkernels are broadly used in any license family.

Forgetting Microsoft: How Steve Ballmer's Surface could win

Jean-Luc
Trollface

@Steve I & Re: Confused

Yeah, call me a dumb, unimaginative, engineer, but this article lost me at :

"Given Microsoft's continued reliance on an outdated, licence-based revenue model"

Say what you will about Microsoft, but they do seem to make money. Despite their software. It is far from obvious that playing the Bing adsearch game would make them near as much. I think Matt would have fitted in very well in the late 90s and early 00s, with the "revenue is an outdated concept" crowd. I respect good imaginative marketing (and good accounting), it is a godsend. Sloppy build-it-and-they-will-come marketing? Less so.

"Fortunately, Microsoft has plenty of experience playing Google's online game, what with Bing and Hotmail"

That depends on how you define "fortunately" ;-)

Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI

Jean-Luc
Trollface

Worthwhile investments, fer sure.

>Will Tschumy said the company has been investing heavily in design since 2003, to the tune of $20bn per year.

>Those efforts resulted in the Office 2007 and 2010 revamps, he said,

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

p.s. I also happen to think he is talking out of his nethers when it comes to the amount, but still...

Hackers deface 'sinful' French Euromillions site

Jean-Luc

Re: Oh you believers...

>As a mathematician / scientist, I'll take the bet that nothing bad will happen to me when I'm dead.

Amen. Not only that, but if there is a deity, the likelihood that one's particular religious affiliation, usually derived at birth, happens to match the Big Guy's is not that great. The bets are pretty spread out between Allah, Christ, Yahweh, Brahma, whatever Buddhists are into (which really should be nothing), etc...

Not to mention the various bits and pieces of Christianity and Islam that consider other bits heretical and pagan and doomed to big lakes of fire.

Live ethically and hope for the best :-)

APPLE: SCREW YOU, BRITS, everyone else says Samsung copied us

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

Re: Called it

First, as others have stated, you comply with court orders, end of story. That's what courts are for, pending appeals.

Second, while I happen to own an Apple, rather than the Samsung gear, I applaud the judge's decision. This whole "booohooo they copied from us" thing is really annoying. Regardless whether it is Apple doing the complaining (often) or Samsung doing it (pretty often too).

The existing laws obviously do not preclude this kind of frivolous lawsuits, leaving it a question of how deep the pockets run for legal whining. Pretty deep in both cases, apparently.

Forcing the companies' having to 'fess up publicly when they are too frivolous is not a bad way to limit this type of behavior.

I don't know the Dyson vs. Vax facts, and unless it was a very frivolous lawsuit, I would see no reason to force a public disclosure - patent infringement cases CAN be grounded in reasonable facts, even when lost.

But I would posit that the "rounded corners" bit is as frivolous as they come and is only there because the law is lacking. Perhaps public opinion will limit this stuff.

Nokia puts Symbian out to pasture ... why not release it into the wild?

Jean-Luc
Boffin

Re: But what if it succeeded?

My sentiments exactly.

Not only the embarrassment, but why on Earth would Nokia seed a possible competitor?

Assuming the core OS itself wasn't the problem, it has features uniquely suited to cell phones. If anybody managed to make it work in phones, say some Chinese hardware outfit, wouldn't Nokia be one of the first to feel the added competition?

What, exactly, would the upside be for Nokia in all this? I understand a company open sourcing their programs when they have no intention to compete in that market anymore. Or if they want to compete precisely by leveraging open source to polish their offering (HP with WebOS?).

But that's not case here, for better or worse - Nokia is still doing phones and their boss says it will be Winphones.

Pandora boss urges 85% pay cut for musicians

Jean-Luc
Boffin

Re: not the end of the world - Pandora's looking for equality with US radio

I think you are missing a point here. Radio is broadcast. So, if I am a big Red Hot Chili Peppers fan and I want to listen to Californication, I _must_ wait till it plays on a radio, even an internet radio. Or I can buy the CD.

If Pandora (which I have never used much) allows me to search for & play Californication at any time of my choosing, then that is a very different case. Radios, even internet radios, have promotional value, yes, but they do not replace CDs.

Last, record companies are greedy pigs. We can all agree on it. But they do have a use - cutting out the middleman entirely leaves me in the dark about which bands to listen to (on the internet you won't know the band is a dog and too much choice is not entirely useful). So, there is some value in record companies promotion of bands, even if their terms are generally currently abusive to musicians, except ones that have massive leverage.

Pandora on the other hand? What value does it add to an artist who has to work as a waiter, as many do, to make ends meet? Greedier pig.

Free games for all after EA discount code goes viral

Jean-Luc

Re: Oh dear

Who's #1 and #2 then? Just curious, in order to avoid.

Pastafarians: Get your noodly appendages off that Facebook suspect

Jean-Luc
Boffin

Re: Aspergers/Atheism connection?

You know what? I am agnostic, but don't particularly agree with bashing or baiting religious folk. Atheists can be just as stridently annoying with their views as the rest of them.

But... there is a big difference between doing something not particularly clever and getting strung up by some bizarre blasphemy law. Surely you can see that the Greek behavior here isn't particularly enlightened and in fact is precisely the curb of free expression that we criticize in some Islamic countries (in fairness I doubt Mr. Pasta-baiter will end up getting lapidated for his sins).

Having said that, you may be on to something because the only mention of _this_ story I am seeing anywhere in Google News trawling is... in the tech sites. Could it be a hoax?

Jean-Luc
Boffin

Re: Without blasphemy charges Christianity wouldn't exist.

That's one way to think of it.

Another is that Rome was a pretty brutal occupier in general and not particularly happy to have revolts.

Which one is more likely?

a) the subjugated religious authorities of a minor state compels the Roman governor to carry out a death sentence.

or

b) Said Roman governor, appraised of the existence of a Messiah whom many Jews see as a potential liberator from Roman tyranny, keeps the peace by any means necessary, which he likely was encouraged to do during his stint of enrichment in the boondocks.

Yay, then of course later it became all the Jews' fault. And we all know how that finished, do we not? Keep in mind, most (all?) of what we know about Jesus comes from the New Testament, not from historical, Roman or other, sources.

Jean-Luc
Facepalm

Re: Oh clever.

>ultimately, rallying people to the very cause which he is ridiculing.

Definitely is. Dumb losers in Tunisia and Egypt get all upset about some idiot blasphemy about the Prophet!

Oh, wait...

This is Greece. European. Human Rights & all that.

And this is Christianity, presumably a lot more tolerant of free speech than Muslims. Though it took our democracies a while to get it that way.

Twat!

Tesla drops veil on top secret solar Superchargers

Jean-Luc
Black Helicopters

Re: If the solar panels capture more energy than they need

>With political parties, heavily influenced by Red Communists, in positions of power in the United States

With statements like these, you make it obvious you are a fruitcake. Many people have varying opinions about who controls whom in the US political systems, but only a raving loon would think the Commies are in charge.

Oracle woos open sourcers with free Java web framework

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

Re: Oracle Universal Installer...

>The ADF version is a lot slicker

Yeah, like the part where you can never bookmark individual support documents in your browser, only add them to your "favorites" on their site. And like the part where you can't even bookmark the login page, you first have to go to a page that has a login link, access that page (which can't be bookmarked) and then enter your user/pw. Which also means FF never remembers the credentials.

Basically, all the session(?) crap in the URLs make it a challenge store a URL anywhere. REST it is most certainly not. If that's what they are giving away...

Slick, sure. Anything is slick after their Flash site.

Apple scrambled to hire iOS 6 maps engineers DAYS before launch

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

Re: About those Google Maps apps

Think before you type. The risk is not iphone 5 just-bought-it folks. Duh!

It's iPhone 4 /4s folks thinking of updating their phones & getting iOS6 w useless maps.

But thats ok dude, you got the religion. I dont, Apple is just one possible vendor to me, and I suspect this cant be a good spot for Apple to be in. They have plenty of money to throw at it so I expect they'll get the egg off their face, eventually.

Jean-Luc
Black Helicopters

About those Google Maps apps

Many seem to expect that Google will helpfully provide an app to plug the gap. They even expect that Apple may block that app.

But... wouldn't it make sense for Google to delay that app, just a bit? Yes, they'd forgo some proximity-based business ad revenue.

But think of all the people who may opt for an Android instead. Tasty! Why pull Apple's chestnuts out of the fire?

Full disclosure: on iOS 5 for now and will cautiously dip my toes into iOS6 once I know my iPhone 4 isn't a second class citizen on it. Not a great fan of the Google App, mostly because it's non-caching/network only. Do appreciate public transport routing, which is available and works really well where I live.

And, as far as no-network/caching map software goes, I nominate PocketEarth (paid app & not to confused with an older celestial app of the same name) which uses OpenStreetMap.

Bit pants on the routing bit, but links to wikipedia for local POIs. And free maps, reasonably accurate in my neck of the woods.

(Black helicopters, cuz starving Apple of a decent map app is a bit conspiracy-theorist)

Who's afraid of Windows 8? Trio leads Microsoft migration pack

Jean-Luc

What do you think about early adoption?

Just wondering. Aside from Win8's UI or other (de)merits.

Clearly, as others have pointed out, the IT departments are hmmm, adventurous. That would be my opinion. Let others lead the way, I'll follow, no need to hurry.

However, let's say your company uses a vendor's flagship, high-visibility, product. Do you think there is a case for being an early adopter IF you get some kind of agreement that you are a reference customer and will receive additional, contractually-agreed upon, support to aid in the migration?

I.e. you are at more risk from doing an early migration but can it be successfully mitigated by vendor support? Just on the basis that, once you are part of the herd, vendor support will be... expensive at best, useless at worst. This relies at least on the expectation that the product is stable and that your challenges will mostly be in migrating/implementing it.

No opinion here, just curious on what others @ Reg have experienced.

Why is the iPhone so successful? 'Cause people love 'em

Jean-Luc
Trollface

Re: Some people

>Feeling the need to lord it over others, especially over a piece of electronic tat is just as sad as living an envious life IMHO

Well said. But it applies regardless of which particular brand of mobile pretty one owns.

What we see here all the time is 'mine is better than yours'. For any definition of 'mine' and 'yours'.

Live & let live, eh?

p.s. One thing I found quite interesting is the HTC vs. Samsung ratings. Pity no one's chimed in.

Edgy penguins test-fly Ubuntu's Quantal Quetzal

Jean-Luc
Thumb Down

Re: No mention of Kubuntu?

>This is exactly the sort of thing about which you should be complaining to your elected representatives, because it ought to be illegal.

Somehow, I doubt she would care.

Which is good, because I certainly would feel very uncomfortable with that level of government regulation of the IT industry. Unless the vendor is in a monopoly position.

People buying hardware have plenty of more OSS friendly vendors to choose from, which is good.

Windows Server 2012: Smarter, stronger, frustrating

Jean-Luc
Joke

Re: I hate per core licences

> Thats like Shell charging me £1.50 a litre on an Astra but £6 a litre if i drive a DB9.

Shell is happy enough with the extra liters that sweet DB9 will be guzzling. Heck, it might even give ya a volume discount.

Plus, your local garage will correct Shell's oversight and not forget to overcharge you.

McAfee splats bug that knocked punters offline

Jean-Luc
Facepalm

Re: hurling my computer out of the window

No imagination necessary. I was consulting at a client with just that - 512 MB Dell laptops + Norton.

Every morning, sure as the sun rises in the east, NAV would take 45 minutes to scan everything and use 200MB of those measly 512 to do so. Couldn't really expect to really start working before 10 as a result.

Us contractors had actually proposed buying the effin RAM for the customer, on our dime. Just to skip the aggravation. Dell being Dell however, the RAM was long since discontinued. Neither did the customer's accounting department fully grasp the difficult concept of 50% efficiency loss x 0.75 hours x $100/hour x 200 days was far more than the RAM would have cost.

NAV and McAfee are far more destructive of productivity than any virus can realistically dream of being.

Office 2013 to eat own file-format dog food

Jean-Luc
Boffin

Re: and not a peep about the ARM version of Windows 8 causing this

"run those binary blobs"???

You are confusing binary executables and binary (as opposed to text) data. Substitute "mp3" for "docx" and see if your remarks make any sense.

Mind you, Microsoft oft tries its best to make its XML as binary-hodge-podge as possible. Looking at you, SSIS source files.

Page: